Want to get all those Movie Maker clips of yours off the computer and on to the big screen? It's easy with Windows Live and your Xbox 360.
Well, you could always hook up a PC to your TV or burn a physical DVD, but let’s try something a little more “on-demand” than that.
First things first, you're going to want an actual movie from Windows Live Movie Maker to import across, so if you haven't used it yet, just go here to see how easy it is.
Before we go any further, this guide assumes a couple of things as well. Firstly, that you have an Xbox 360 and a home network. Secondly, that you are running Windows 7 on your PC. If you're running Vista at home, you should be able to get the same result, but you'll have to click here to find out how to set up streaming for that.
Once you've got yourself a Movie Maker creation you want to use, make sure you output it using a 1080 p profile to get the maximum resolution. Trust us, you're going to want it for the big screen.
In this example, we've saved our movie to a local hard drive in a folder that's part of our Videos library. We've got this library set up so that its contents can be streamed to other devices across our home network.
Here's how you can do it:
First, click the start button icon in the lower left of the toolbar. In the Windows 7 Start Menu search box, type “media streaming” as follows:
Launch 'Media streaming options' and you’ll see this:
Turn on media streaming, and you’ll get the following options:
Be sure to name your media library, which by default will be the name of your computer. That’s all there is to it! You can customise the settings if you like, but as is, anything in your Pictures, Videos, or Music Libraries will be visible to other media-streaming-capable machines on your network, including your Xbox 360.
Now that our movie has been saved and our media streaming options are set up, let's turn on the Xbox 360. Under the ‘My Xbox’ heading, we'll navigate to the ‘Video Library’ and select it. At this point, you'll be asked to select a source. Your Xbox will see the computer as a source and lists it as an option, so scroll down and select it. Once you've done that, you can navigate by folder and find the movie you want.
And that’s it, now you can control playback straight through your Xbox and watch the movies on your TV whenever you want.
How it works